Heavy rain leads to flooding in central and northern New JerseyHeavy rains this week have resulted in extensive flooding in central and northern New Jersey. Along the Passaic, Rockaway and Ramapo rivers, waters are still rising, wreaking havoc on residents exhausted by years of flooding. (Video by Nyier Abdou and Adya Beasley/The Star-Ledger)

From the front porch of her house on Riveredge Road in Lincoln Park, Kathleen Thornley can always see nesting blue herons and any number of duck and geese species gliding along the placid Pompton River.

“I love it here. I’m a nature lover,” she said. “I’ve seen antlered bucks in my yard and bald eagles fly over the river. It is very peaceful.”

But for two weeks every year, when winter’s thaw collides with spring rains, the river runs a little wild.

Thornley’s neighborhood is on the west bank of the Pompton, and just a few hundred yards north of the Passaic River. Yesterday it was under 3 feet of water, with more rising, as was the Mountain View section of Wayne across stream.

On Riveredge Road, flooding is a fact of life. Chris Britton, out yesterday in a flat-bottom boat to help neighbors, reduced it to a “nuisance.”

“This is a great neighborhood,” he said. “I’ve lived here 51 years (his whole life). It’s home. Growing up, we had floods like this every five years or so. Now they’re coming with more frequency. But I see it as a nuisance rather than a reason to move.”

In other words, you learn to deal with it. Almost every house has a rowboat tied out front and waders or a wet suit hanging from a porch railing. Linda Smith was in her waders, walking back and forth to check on her house, once to shut off the gas.

People in the neighborhood say the flooding has been worse since the Pompton Lakes floodgates were built in 2007 to alleviate flooding along the Ramapo River in Oakland.

“They protect the homes up there, but release the water on us,” said Thornley, who has lived on Riveredge Road for 23 years.

“I don’t like to point fingers,” Britton said, “but there is an obvious connection.”

While it may be worse, flooding in the area is as old as the last ice age, when a departing glacier deposited rock and sentiment in the Watchung Mountain gaps and sent the bottled-up Passaic on its meandering course. The Passaic-Pompton junction is where water from five other key rivers surge together. The Whippany, Rockaway, Pequannock, Wanaque and Ramapo all come tumbling down the Highlands to the basin.

In the Riveredge Road neighborhood, the Pompton races by on one side, while the Passaic spills out and encroaches up on the other.

In a few places yesterday, the Pompton current washed through yards, mixing with the more placid Passaic floodwaters on the other side of the street. Firewood floated by like rafts, bumping into phone poles and fences.

Still, many people there aren’t even thinking of moving, and it’s been that way for generations.

“A lot of people have deep roots put in here,” said Suzanne Wintemburg, whose family has owned the neighborhood’s Wolfson’s Market since 1921. “There is a real family dynamic, where people will buy their parents’ house or grandparents’ house.

“It is very much a family neighborhood,” she said. “When it floods, you guys (reporters) all come here and ask people ‘Why do you live here?’ It’s their home.”

This is apparent along Riveredge Road. Stacked on top of sheds and decks are children’s toys and bikes, moved to higher ground so they won’t get washed away. A new playground is in the middle of the neighborhood. Even in the flood, some children were out playing.

Rahel Toth was keeping an eye on her little brother, Jeromos, as water crept up the railroad ties in the front yard. Both danced in delight each time the sump pump would send a stream of water out of the PVC pipe and splashed on their rubber-booted feet.

“It is fun for them,” said their father, Balazs. “They don’t see the tragedy of it.”

The National Weather Service, in conjunction with the U.S. Geological Survey, forecasts river crests at several locations along major rivers. The worst flooding is going to be in Passaic, Pompton and Saddle Rivers. Other than that, only Phillipsburg is expected to have moderate flooding. All others will have minor or no flooding. Click on the markers on the map to see how high the water is expected to crest across the state.